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We are a society of shock addicts. Wars are waged with 'Shock and Awe.' Countries are remade with 'shock therapy.' Prisoners' bodies are subjected to 'capture shock' and electroshock. In Blank is Beautiful, Klein argues that shock is both our culture's dominant metaphor for radical change and has become our economy's primary means of creating wealth. She calls this process 'disaster capitalism.'The modern market is addicted to the kind of rapid economic growth that only cataclysmic events can provide: wars, natural disasters, regime collapses and economic meltdowns. Klein shows that after countries and cities are hit by these catastrophic events, they are invariably hit once again, this time with 'shock therapy,' a process of rapid-fire auctioning off of the state.What connects all these uses of shock, Klein argues, is a profoundly dangerous idea: that in order to change a place, or a mind, it must first be wiped clean, blanked. Based on breakthrough reporting from shock zones around the world, this is a frontal attack on the idea that 'free markets' and democracy are interlinked. Blank is Beautiful builds the case that modern capitalism, through its addiction to shock, reveals itself as not just anti-democratic, but anti-human.

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`Naomi Klein as a writer is an accusing angel...A book to be read everywhere.' -- John Berger

`a brilliant, brave and terrifying book...nothing less than the secret history of the `Free Market'... compulsory reading' -- Arundhati Roy
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, author and filmmaker. Her first book, the international bestseller No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, was translated into 28 languages and called "a movement bible" by The New York Times. She writes an internationally syndicated column for The Nation and The Guardian and reported from Iraq for Harper's magazine. In 2004, she released The Take, a feature documentary about Argentina's occupied factories, co-produced with director Avi Lewis. She is a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics and holds an honorary Doctor of Civil Laws from the University of King's College, Nova Scotia. www.naomiklein.org
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

This book is a multi faceted read dealing with the worlds economy's since Pinochets Chile - & what a fascinating read it is. I'm no economist but this book is written in such a clear and concise way that it's easy to follow and sparks insight after insight into the worlds recent and current political & economic affairs.

The bad guy - Milton Friedman and his Chicago school based economic agenda that has been pushed on the world in the most brutal and hostile manner. Starting with Pinochet & his democracy upending regime in Chile and working it's way through to the Bush administration and their democracy quashing war in Iraq & all in the name of implementing free markets - (Friedman Ideology)

The Premise that the free market and democracy go hand in hand is a lie and What I like about this book is the professional journalist approach to the writing (all facts and quips referenced) & the journey that Naomi takes you on to expose this myth. She shows just how democracy has has been suppressed, always with force in order to implement a free market model in countries all over the world from the southern cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay & Bolivia) to Southeast Asia, Russia, China, Eastern Europe & Iraq.

Warning! A world view expansion alert for any one that reads this book.

If you need a credible and potent explanation of what Thatcher, Osborne, Cameron, Hunt etc are up to with the NHS and the dismantling of the Keynes inspired UK State then look no further.

The problem is that the people who read this book already suspected that Friedman and the "Chicago boys" were a bunch of ill meaning carpet baggers, with no respect for the common man, when it is actually those who still routinely fall for the failed promises and neo-liberal rhetoric of his acolytes that need to.

Enjoyed Klein's 'No Logo and looked forward to reading this but too often Klein appears to shoe-horn everything it a pre-conceived anti-Western analysis with no subtlety or nuance. Example: she says that the NATO attack on Belgrade created the conditions for rapid privatizations in former Yugoslavia. That's possibly correct but I thought it was more about seeking to combat the Serbian forces which had massacred Muslims in Srebrenica. Second example: Klein's thesis is that the Falklands war in 1982 provided an excuse to crush the miners. Again while it might have been used by the right for such a purpose, Klein cannot bring herself to acknowledge that the Falklands war was about supporting right to the Islanders for self-determination after being invaded by a fascist regime.

I share her distaste for Friedmanite economics and for the Bush administration but this book is one for followers of Bernie Saunders or Jeremy Corbyn only who simply want their world-view confirmed.

A very depressing but essential book. Naomi Klein has done her research and written a compelling account of how neoloberal economic ideology has shaped much of what has happened in the world since the early 1970s. What emerges is frightening but essential to understand if we want to create a fairer society.